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Wikipedia is not short on cash

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Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#331

Post by blululu »

andrewstuart wrote: post #61

Is this the same person who every now and then appears on HN utterly outraged by Wikipedia's fundraising? I donate to Wikipedia. And I am glad they have lots of money. I do not feel outraged about it, I feel happy about it. I do not feel outraged that they use whatever persuasive tactics that they use - this is necessary in the modern world. Wikipedia is a great service, it should be valued. They should not always be…

Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation are not the same thing. The author’s sentiment is pretty common among the large number of volunteer editors who make the bulk of what makes Wikipedia valuable. You can find people of all sorts of political affiliations who edit Wikipedia and feel like the WMF fundraising schemes are insulting to their contributions to the project and put the whole project at risk. If Wikipedia were a business then fine, they could do as they like but it is also a community and the public facing behavior of WMF has serious consequences to that community.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#332

Post by fluoridation »

klelatti wrote: post #315
fluoridation wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So when an oil company writes a report on the viability of solar power then that doesn't affect how we should view the report? But why do you think it does affect how you view the report? Because the company is likely to lie, right? So you should perhaps examine the report more carefully. But that has nothing to do with the report's factuality. It may affect how likely it is to be true, but once you've determined i…

The actually makes a very basic factual error. > Indeed, in the 2012/13 year the Foundation budgeted for $1.9m to provide all its free information on tap. $1.9m is was the capital expenditure budget for 2012/3 (ie cost of servers etc). But I'm sure that his motivations had nothing to do with the fact that he found a conveniently small expense figure to mislead with.

Are you saying 1.9M is only the cost of the hardware, excluding the cost of bandwidth, power, etc.? Then what's the actual number? The misreporting is only relevant if the actual number is meaningfully different.

EDIT: And I insist, all that's relevant is the error itself. The political affiliation of the person who made the error shouldn't matter.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#333

Post by fatbird »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #244
rippercushions wrote: post #21

Eh. If you don't want to donate, don't, but I don't quite get the outrage here. The Wikimedia Foundation is still small as far as charities go and is visibly making Wikipedia better: the new UI is a breath of fresh air, and given the insane complexity of MediaWiki markup, the visual editor is a piece of unimaginable technical wizardry. Wiktionary is an unheralded gem and even Wikidata is starting to be genuinely usef…

The author of this has a decades long history of really disliking Wikipedia, so it seems unlikely that he's genuinely concerned about their funding levels. It's just another thing to attack them with. Why he's so consistently angry with Wikipedia is still a bit of a mystery to me. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Orlowski#Criticism_of...

Orlowski was acting very polite in this article (and presented some compelling points) compared to most of his work at The Register, but he’s always been a beacon of “yellow journalism” [0]. I’ve always thought it was less a crusade than a favourite target.

[0] “journalism that is based upon sensationalism and crude exaggeration.”

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#334

Post by starkd »

The post made some good arguments until it through this in. I have sympathy for the editors on wikipedia who make nothing for their toil, but it is, after all, their choice to do so, for many different reasons. So, please don't make this into a story about oppressive victimhood. Perhaps changes to the wiki governance or even an alternative model. But Marx doesn't bring a whole lot of credibility to the discussion.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#335

Post by Cthulhu_ »

denton-scratch wrote: post #253
concordDance wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With all claims backed by citations of course, should anyone make unfounded accusations of bias. Note that citations don't make bias impossible or claims true, they just make it easier to decide whether to trust information. E.g. If I cite the BBC in my statement and you trust the BBC you're more likely to trust my statement. A lot of right wingers believe that most news sources (and particularly a lot of the ones…

> A lot of right wingers believe that most news sources are grossly misleading or lying Not just right-wingers. With few exceptions, Wikipedia "reliable sources" are mostly mainstream media, which most lefties regard as locked-down, neo-liberal propaganda cannons.

"the mainstream media" is a right-wing dogwhistle; their own media outlets is mainstream: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_C...

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#336

Post by naasking »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #114
ghusto wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I stopped donating when I saw how politicised they were. People are people, and will have opinions about things. People of a kind will naturally group together. This is all fine, but it becomes a problem when one of the things that make what you produce worthwhile is neutrality, and you can't keep your politics in your pants.

I don't really believe these claims of "Wokepedia", because no-one making these claims has presented actual evidence. I'm sure you have some though, otherwise commenting as you did would mean you'd be as guilty of "not keeping your politics in your pants" as you accuse Wikipedia of being.

> I don't really believe these claims of "Wokepedia"

I expect this would qualify.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund

which also links to:

https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2020/06/03/we-stand-for...

Most people would probably place a lot of this firmly in the "woke" category.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#337

Post by Cthulhu_ »

throwoutway wrote: post #295
seba_dos1 wrote: post #286

Ok - the next time Wikipedia asks for a donation, I'll give it twice as much. Noted. This take is so incredibly bad. It's good that they're not struggling financially - and people stopping to donate is a great way to change that. They aren't struggling, until they are. I don't want to live in a world where the foundation behind Wikipedia struggles with financing, so continuing to donate is the only sane way forward.

Donate to archive.org instead. Wikipedia doesn’t need your money; they’ll get it from pestering people. If they’re ever under-supported one year, they’ll let you know that too

I think they would see government and big internet company support coming in if they were ever truly financially struggling.

I mean I would't be surprised if one of the big cloud provider offers them free hosting; it'd be a great goodwill move, and cloud providers are competing HARD with each other.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#338

Post by Macha »

jasonlotito wrote: post #317
Macha wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notably none of the criteria measured in that rating consider their marketing. So yes their policies and filings exist, but those are not what they're presenting to potential donors, so do not prove the ads are not misleading

https://wikimediafoundation.org/ How is this misleading? They provide an incredibly large amount of information. And more information can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Disputes

That is not the place donors get sent, nor the content of the ads shown to potential donors. The ads are screenshotted in the linked article and they lead here: https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Landi...

Yes, users can go elsewhere to find the information. The records are on file in the metaphorical filing cabinet downstairs. But if the messaging you're putting front and center contradicts said records, their existence doesn't counter criticism of the messaging

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#339

Post by josephcsible »

klelatti wrote: post #217
Turing_Machine wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he's presenting a factual summary of what's going on, his "motivations" are irrelevant. If he's not presenting a factual summary of what's going on, his "motivations" are likewise irrelevant. If you can refute his claims, by all means do so, but vague ad hominems don't impress me.

Not sure why accurately reporting his track record of attacking Wikimedia with a clear - and self admitted - right wing bias is a 'vague ad hominem'.

Because it's about the person making the argument rather than about the argument itself.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#340

Post by Cthulhu_ »

socialismisok wrote: post #313
soundnote wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are leftists. The woke ideology has a clear geneaology to Marx. Of course, they are not economic class focused leftists by any stretch of the imagination - bourgeoisie champagne socialists who've re-engineered the Marxian thinking style to focus on social identities, which makes it really easy to purport to care for the oppressed. It's very high quality champagne socialism. But it's still leftist in origin and i…

Democrats are not a left party. They are squarely center, maybe even center right. As someone who is a communist, the Dems have nothing to do with Marx, and they are about as capitalist as they come.

Even the formally communist country of china semes to be capitalist in truth. To the point where they will likely overtake the US as the richest country in the world.
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